Hello, my name is Rees – from ctrl.alt.rees – and I’m a vintage computing and retro gaming enthusiast and electronics tinkerer from the UK. My interests are predominantly Atari stuff, 90s PC gaming (particularly early 3D) and electronics projects, but anything retro/tech is cool with me!
You may know me from my vintage computing and retro gaming YouTube channel – and you can also follow me on my website, Instagram, or Twitter!
My first gaming experience was at the tender age of 5, playing Keystone Kapers and Frogger on my cousin’s Atari 2600. From that fateful Christmas Day onward I was hooked, and moved on to the Atari ST with a brief detour via the Acorn Electron (until it exploded). We got our first PC – a 486 DX2/66 – in 1994, and I rediscovered retro and my love for all things Atari in the early 2000s when I finally got the chance to own my dream childhood console, the Jaguar.
I think it’s safe to say that I was an odd child.
I now have a pretty extensive collection of Atari computers and consoles as well as a few other interesting machines, with particular favourites being an upgraded IBM 5150 (the original MS-DOS PC) and a rare Japanese Atari 2800 as well as some very rare prototypes.
Beginning life in 2022 as “PiGUS”, a Raspberry Pi based project intended to emulate the iconic 1992 Gravis UltraSound souncard in ISA-based systems, the PicoGUS has since grown into a very impressive self contained multi-soundcard emulator supporting the following cards: Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) – the primary focus of PicoGUS, hence the name Sound Blaster 2.0 […]
FujiNet – a project started in 2021 – is a multi-peripheral emulator for 8-bit computers based on the ubiquitous ESP32 system-on-a-chip. Initially targeting Atari 8-bit systems like the 400, 800, and XE/XL range, there are now versions for the Apple II & III, Coleco ADAM, Commodore 64, and Tandy CoCo, with more being added. In […]
Last year Atari released the 2600+ console – a modern day reimagining of their classic Video Computer System from 1977 (later known as the 2600). The new console adds modern conveniences like HDMI and USB-C power and uses software emulation and a clever mapper / dumper setup to dump and play games from original 2600 […]
Still running Windows 95, NT4, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP in 2024? Well, first up, you probably shouldn’t be doing that on your “daily driver” PC – these OSes all stopped receiving security updates years ago. But of course, there’s still a lot of historical interest in these older Windows releases, particularly for those […]
At CES 1987 Atari CEO Jack Tramiel unveiled his “Business Is War” philosophy, and how it was shaping the direction of the business he’d taken over in 1983. The founder of Commodore – a holocaust survivor and notoriously uncompromising businessman – had already been responsible for quite the turnaround at his old rival: in 4 […]
This author remembers playing Wolfenstein 3D on a 286 machine “back in the day” – and that machine must have been pretty fancy, as the game also required a VGA card. Well, 30 years later and that steep requirement is thankfully finally no longer the case, and now even owners of lesser PCs can finally […]
If you were around in the late 90s and/or early 2000s and were keen on backing up all of those games and other optical media that you totally legitimately owned – or, to be fair, just wanted to save wear and tear on your original discs and having to dig them out of the boxes […]
Back in April we reported on the announcement of the MK8330, a new ISA sound card from the makers of the Orpheus aimed squarely at a more budget market. The card is based around the CMI8330 chip, a popular choice for onboard audio in the mid-late 90s, and boasts high compatibility – with support for […]
1992’s Watara Supervision was a cut-price competitor to the Nintendo Game Boy, offering a library of games that would grow to a grand total of 65 commercial releases during its short lifespan. Manufactured under license by various companies, you may have known it as the QuickShot Supervision, Travell Mate, Hartung SV-100, or Electrolab depending where […]
Richard from Heber – the MiSTer MultiSystem project’s hardware manufacturing partner – has revealed more details on his handheld prototypes (previously covered on RetroRGB) in an interview with RMC. The MiSTer MultiSystem is a project launched in August 2021 by Heber and RMC which combines many of MiSTer’s most popular hardware add-ons into an all-in-one […]
